Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

"No doubt," eh? Which sentence in their letter suggests to you that they had Portland in mind?

I did not state that the Harper's Letter addressed Portland. I stated that its signatories no doubt have commented negatively on Portland. As Portland occured after the letter, those comments or pieces would come after the letter. Unless you're aware of a time machine to which journalists have access.

"A thoughtful fashion," huh? Are they pensively rubbing their chin to look good, or is it the complete failure to address the specific facts of any particular situation that leaves you thinking that?

They are addressing the issue rationally, dispassionately, as professionals in their industry were once compelled to do. Even one of my favorites, Thompson, who was openly biased, sought to distance himself from emotive pleas and yelling. When he attacked, he did so from a position of observer, mocker, not that of aggrieved victim whose "personal truth" may not be challenged.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I posted about Portland, suggesting that maybe it's not quite as apocalyptic as everyone else seems to think, so let me expand on that. Three related things are happening with the DHS presence.

(1) You have federal authorities ignoring state and local authorities to pick their own (confrontational) policing strategy. Since the current administration likes to pursue its own maximalist policies and is not restrained by what anyone else thinks, there's really nothing to stop them other than the November election. Acting in an unrestrained manner has really become an end in itself for them. Given the usually limited nature of federal jurisdiction in policing, it would not matter so much, except that...

(2) DHS has ludicrously expanded its own jurisdiction to go after any protest in Portland instead of protecting federal buildings. This will not stand up in the courts if and when it gets tested, as if they try to prosecute anyone, which it doesn't appear the local U.S. Attorney is particularly interested in doing, as they must know, which is why...

(3) DHS doesn't seem to be arresting anyone because they want to keep the federal courts uninvolved for as long as possible, so they essentially are exploiting the lattitude that law enforcement generally has to detain people for a short time before letting them go. Other police do this all the time at political protests, and there doesn't really seem to be a good way to curb this. If they hold people too long, then they have a habeas problem, and the point is to own the street in the moment, not to put people away indefinitely. You don't usually see the feds doing this because of (1) and (2), but it doesn't seem any less problematic than when, say, NYPD does it.

I think they are there to undermine civilian control of the local police and encourage a greater use of force.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Why is everyone so mean to Bari Weiss:

https://nonzero.org/post/mean-to-bari-weiss

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

I think they are there to undermine civilian control of the local police and encourage a greater use of force.

I've been getting a lot of detail from my sister and mother in Portland about what is going on there, and it sounds not to dissimilar to your comments on Minneapolis not long ago. There is a very dysfunctional and hostile police force, that has escalated a situation, but there also is a situation with some of the downtown rioting that needs to be handled. The Mayor has not been helpful and the City Council is looking to take control of the Police.

So the feds are basically bringing a gas truck to a bonfire.

[Oliver_Wendell_Ramone]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I've been getting a lot of detail from my sister and mother in Portland about what is going on there, and it sounds not to dissimilar to your comments on Minneapolis not long ago. There is a very dysfunctional and hostile police force, that has escalated a situation, but there also is a situation with some of the downtown rioting that needs to be handled. The Mayor has not been helpful and the City Council is looking to take control of the Police.

So the feds are basically bringing a gas truck to a bonfire.

The feds are now gassing a bunch of middle-aged moms, some of whom I actually know.

It's not actually the City Council gunning for control of the police, but one council member who is a long-time reform advocate. Portland has a weird system of government. Mayor is really just another council member; more legislator than executive. His one special power is the power to assign city bureaus to council members. Mayors have usually assigned the police to themselves.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Because that's impossible. In its most frequent form, an attempted "cancellation" involves a group of pundits, reporters, or bloggers piling on to a target at once. Shall I address each criticism?

So pick one.

I needn't engage their critiques on substance at all, for there is never a credible or defensible basis for the following argument to be made against moderates, conservatives, or even fellow liberals who critique things like wokeness or #metoo:

Your opinion is so awful you should be made a pariah, publicly shamed to the extent that your voice will be considered deviant and inappropriate for the public space.

Who says that? Again, you manufacture your own caricature to fight with.

It's impossible to cite single instances of cancel culture. We don't have the bandwidth.

So cancel culture is like the wind, everywhere and nowhere at once? That makes you a guy yelling at the wind.

The argument you are making, which other defenders of cancel culture are making in other forums, seeks to burden the people complaining about cancel culture with an impossible task - to examine each instance uniquely.

I'm not trying to "burden" you with anything, unless you think it's a burden to respond to actual things that actual people are saying, instead of making stuff up. And I didn't suggest you examine "each instance" of cancel culture -- you could start with one.

You are playing the same game that Taibbi does with the media, which is to make a bunch of broad pronouncements about a lot of things that a lot of people are saying, without every referring to any one person with enough specificity to figure out what you are talking about. It's rhetorically slick, in that you stick to claims that are impossible to refute. But if you only say things that can't be disproved, you say only things that can't be proved. It's "really quite daft and not very helpful."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

I think they are there to undermine civilian control of the local police and encourage a greater use of force.

I don't know much about Portland politics, but I think we've all learned lately that it's hard to undermine civilian control of the local police, but only because you can't undermine something that doesn't exist.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

What is cancel culture? Perhaps it's a rhetorical trick to defend people by avoiding discussion of what they're doing, and turning attention to their attackers.

Kevin Williamson's piece in the New York Post, which Sebby shared, says the following about the defenestration of former Bon Appetite editor Adam Rapoport:

In the course of a week, three editors went down: James Bennett of the Times was canceled for publishing an opinion on the opinion page, Senator Tom Cotton’s defense of the Insurrection Act, which permits the use of federal troops to quell riots; Claudia Eller was pushed out at Variety (suspended, formally, but not expected to return to her position) after penning a white-privilege mea culpa that was found to be unconvincing; Adam Rapoport of Bon Appétit was canned for much the same reason, his offense aggravated by a turn-of-the-century photograph of him dressed as a stereotypical Puerto Rican at a Halloween party.

Set Bennett and Eller aside, and just look at Rapoport. Read again what Williamson says about his firing, and then read the article that *he* links to, which says much more about "accusations of discrimination and lack of inclusiveness at the magazine." Note, also, that the article doesn't describe Rapoport being fired after an inadequate mea culpa -- it doesn't describe any mea culpa at all. (Rapoport announced he was leaving " "to reflect on the work that I need to do as a human being"). It's pretty clear that Rapoport wasn't getting it done, and that Williamson is not interested in facts that would undercut a horror stories about the excesses of cancel culture. So does anticancel culture necessarily mean ignoring the real reasons why people change jobs (hello, Bari Weiss)? One complaint about the Harper's letter is that it ignored the particular facts of a bunch of situations in favor of a little story about the freedom of speech. One sees a theme.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

So pick one.



Who says that? Again, you manufacture your own caricature to fight with.



So cancel culture is like the wind, everywhere and nowhere at once? That makes you a guy yelling at the wind.



I'm not trying to "burden" you with anything, unless you think it's a burden to respond to actual things that actual people are saying, instead of making stuff up. And I didn't suggest you examine "each instance" of cancel culture -- you could start with one.

You are playing the same game that Taibbi does with the media, which is to make a bunch of broad pronouncements about a lot of things that a lot of people are saying, without every referring to any one person with enough specificity to figure out what you are talking about. It's rhetorically slick, in that you stick to claims that are impossible to refute. But if you only say things that can't be disproved, you say only things that can't be proved. It's "really quite daft and not very helpful."

I sit in awe.

Taibbi has somehow channeled the sentiment of my last 10 or so posts into an epic micdrop.

Not only do I love that last link, but I am sending it to every annoying right and left crank I know. It savages both as deserved, and elevates Taibbi above the arguing rabble who’ve picked a side. Perfectly insulting stuff.

Thank you. I’d have found it myself, but later, and fresh is best.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Taibbi’s podcast with Adolph Reed, a UPenn prof: https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...dcast-1023606/

Quite literally all the heresies are exalted here. But Reed is crazy smart and a serious “elite.” Next level.

But they are unfair to DiAngelo. Reed most. Reed’s bio: https://live-sas-www-polisci.pantheo...le/adolph-reed

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Oliver_Wendell_Ramone

The feds are now gassing a bunch of middle-aged moms, some of whom I actually know.

It's not actually the City Council gunning for control of the police, but one council member who is a long-time reform advocate. Portland has a weird system of government. Mayor is really just another council member; more legislator than executive. His one special power is the power to assign city bureaus to council members. Mayors have usually assigned the police to themselves.

Tell us more, very interesting.

I'm following the Moms. We need more badass Moms.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Tell us more, very interesting.

I'm following the Moms. We need more badass Moms.

A friend of mine is one of those moms. She has always been a badass, but she was radicalized on Saturday because the DHS militia was using the fire station across the street from her suburban house as a staging area on Saturday as she and her family were sitting down to eat dinner. She'd already been protesting locally, but when she saw the army setting up right in front of her kids, she knew she had to do something.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

A friend of mine is one of those moms. She has always been a badass, but she was radicalized on Saturday because the DHS militia was using the fire station across the street from her suburban house as a staging area on Saturday as she and her family were sitting down to eat dinner. She'd already been protesting locally, but when she saw the army setting up right in front of her kids, she knew she had to do something.

It’s weird. We needed the National Guard, because a sizable chunk of our city was on fire (and the local police couldn’t or wouldn’t) restore enough calm to put them out and prevent the setting of more.

In Portland this federal response seems like it’s about people outside one particular building?? People that the local PD was already roughing up? Nothing about it makes any sense.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Nothing about it makes any sense.

Militarization of law enforcement + Trumpian lack of accountability + Nixonian law & order + election year = Portland

[Oliver_Wendell_Ramone]

Originally Posted by Adder

It’s weird. We needed the National Guard, because a sizable chunk of our city was on fire (and the local police couldn’t or wouldn’t) restore enough calm to put them out and prevent the setting of more.

In Portland this federal response seems like it’s about people outside one particular building?? People that the local PD was already roughing up? Nothing about it makes any sense.

Two buildings, side by side. There have been protests, marches, etc. citywide, mostly peaceful (except some recent action at/around the cop union's building, and those fuckers deserve anything they get). The late night protests initially focused on the Justice Center, which is essentially the county intake jail. The federal courthouse, next door, has been covered in graffiti, most of it variations on FTP and ACAB, since early on. More attention has been focused on it since the fed goons showed up.

To be fair, the fed troops did not come out last night until protesters started tearing plywood off of the building. But once they came out, they showed their usual level of restraint.